is taken from 1st Samuel 13. 1st Samuel chapter 13, we'll read together the first 16 verses of the chapter particularly Our text is taken from verses 5 through 15 of this chapter, so if we pay more particular attention to those verses as we read them. 1 Samuel chapter 13, reading from verse 1. Saul reigned one year, and when he had reigned two years over Israel, Saul chose him 3,000 men of Israel, whereof 2,000 were with Saul in Michmash and in Mount Bethel, and 1,000 were with Jonathan in Gibeah of Benjamin, and the rest of the people he sent every man to his tent. And Jonathan smote the garrison of the Philistines that was in Geba. And the Philistines heard of it. And Saul blew the trumpet throughout all the land saying, let the Hebrews hear. All Israel heard say that Saul had smitten a garrison of the Philistines and that Israel also was had in abomination with the Philistines. And the people were gathered together after Saul to Gilgal. And the Philistines gathered themselves together to fight with Israel 30,000 chariots and 6,000 horsemen and people as the sand which is on the seashore in multitude. And they came up and pitched in Michmash eastward from Beth-Avon. And when the men of Israel saw that they were in a strait, for the people were distressed, then the people did hide themselves in caves and in thickets and in rocks and in high places and in pits. And some of the Hebrews went over Jordan into the land of Gad and Gilead. As for Saul, he was yet in Gilgal and all the people followed him trembling. And he tarried seven days according to the set time that Samuel had appointed, but Samuel came not to Gilgal. And all the people were scattered from him. And Saul said, bring hither a burnt offering to me and peace offerings. And he offered the burnt offering And it came to pass that as soon as he had made an end of offering the burnt offering, behold, Samuel came. And Saul went out to meet him that he might salute him. And Samuel said, What hast thou done? And Saul said, Because I saw that the people were scattered from me and that thou camest not within the days appointed and that the Philistines gathered themselves together at Michmash, therefore said I, the Philistines will come down now upon me to Gilgal and I have not made supplication unto the Lord. I forced myself therefore and offered a burnt offering. Samuel said to Saul, thou hast done foolishly. Thou hast not kept the commandment of the Lord thy God which he commanded thee for now would the Lord have established thy kingdom upon Israel forever. But now thy kingdom shall not continue. The Lord hath sought him a man after his own heart and the Lord hath commanded him to be captain over his people because thou hast not kept that which the Lord commanded thee. And Samuel arose, and gat him up from Gilgal unto Gibeah of Benjamin. And Saul numbered the people that were present with him about six hundred men. And Saul, and Jonathan his son, and the people that were present with them abode in Gibeah of Benjamin, but the Philistines encamped in Michmash." Amen. Thus far we read in God's holy word. Beloved congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, we arrive tonight at a point in the history of the life of Samuel that we'll be going through, in which is a very telling event for this new king, King Saul. There's a crisis which occurs, and in this crisis Saul is tested. He's put to the test by this crisis, and in the providence of God, He fails that test. The failing of this test is not just a matter of finding out that this King Saul, he's a fallible man and he makes mistakes. We already know that, every man is. And it's not just a matter that this King Saul is a sinner, as all men are, and that he will sin. That's taken for granted too, we already know that. No, it's significant, this event in this way, because it's revealed through Samuel that Saul's kingdom will not continue. God is already preparing another man to be king over Israel. Here he is as king, and Samuel comes with the word, God's preparing another man. That's striking, isn't it? What we are to see here with the situation that arises and then with the thoughts and the actions of Saul and then Samuel's assessment, what Samuel comes along and what he brings in bringing the Word of God to this situation, these matters are deeply relevant to our lives. These things are not just for thousands of years ago, God has them in the Word because they are very relevant to what happens in our life, and the situations that God brings to us. Our Lord is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And because of this, he continues to use the whole of the circumstances of our lives, just the same as he used all the circumstances of Saul's life, to bring to bear his truth. God does that in our lives. The truth about us, the truth about our faith, the truth about our walk with Him. And therefore, we will face in our life constantly crises. They will happen. They will sometimes be really big events, events that come and hit you in the face. But then there are all the small crises, just the little things day by day, you know, the losing of your car keys and little things, big and little crises all the time. God constantly brings them to us to test us. God's using those everyday events to apply the Word, because He gives the Word to us in the preaching of the Word, as we take it up and read it, God continues to bring that Word to us, but then He applies it. He actually uses our lives to then say, now this is how it applies. This is where it comes down to meet you in reality. What He exhibits by those things, is whether we have foolishness or whether we have wisdom that is acting in us. We will either, as we face these big and little crises, we will either humbly trust in Him and we will grow in Him through these things and we will rejoice in His truth and grace and we will walk humbly before Him in love or we will follow foolishness and we will lose the kingdom. Let's take up our text under that theme. Foolishness loses the kingdom. We'll consider that under three headings. First of all, we will see the result of folly here with Saul. Secondly, we will see Samuel's response to this. What is it that Samuel comes along and assesses this situation? What is his response? Thirdly, we see the great encouragement that comes for our hearts out of all of this. Foolishness loses the kingdom. First of all, the result of folly. Saul finds himself here in a very serious situation, doesn't he, as we consider the whole scenario. We read in verse one for a start, if we sort of get the background of this, a little bit of an unusual verse, this one, and there's been a bit of controversy over this particular verse. Saul reigned one year, and when he had reigned two years over Israel, Saul chose him and so on. What is it saying? Well, remember that Saul's beginnings was a little unusual. Remember he was anointed first of all privately by Samuel and then it was some time until he was revealed to the people at Mizpah and then after that he still went home and he didn't really sort of get gathered up to be the king until quite some time afterwards when the Ammonites came against Jabesh Gilead. So, What we can see from that, almost certainly when it says, Saul reigned one year, it's saying, okay, here he was and he reigned for that kind of year, but he wasn't really gathered up to be the king. And then it tells us, and when he had reigned two years, in other words, then another two years after that, when he was more fully king, when they'd rejoiced at Gilgal and they'd said, yes, Saul is our king and everyone had got behind him. Then we find, okay, at that point, after three years, that Saul chose him 3,000 men of Israel and so on. But to get a timing on all of this too, we need to then gather up other parts of Scripture too, because we find from Acts 13.21, it tells us that Saul reigned in total for 40 years. So that was the length of his reign. And we learn from 2 Samuel that King David was 30 years old when he began to reign. So you then take 30 off the 40 and that means that David was in fact born at around about 10 years into Saul's reign. And then when you look at here in verse 14 where it speaks to the fact that God has sought him out a man after his own heart and the Lord has commanded him to be, it sounds like David has already, as it were, come into existence. So it may well be that about this time that David has at least been conceived may be born. So these events probably happen around about 10 years into Saul's reign. what may well happen is that this verse 3 happens a number of years afterwards. First of all Saul establishes for himself a standing army, which is what verse 2 is speaking about. He establishes a standing army and he lets the other men go home and he has these sort of two aspects to his army, but then quite some time later after ongoing, you know, sort of defending Israel against the Philistines, then Jonathan attacks the garrison of the Philistines that was in Geba, and that really stirs things up. And now all the Philistines say, right, and they march on Mikmash. That seems to be the flow of things here. But it's this latest skirmish. Jonathan attacks the garrison. The Philistines are now gathering and getting stronger and more organized and they're ready to attack at any time. Huge gathering, you look at that, 30,000 chariots, 6,000 horsemen, people as the sand which is on the seashore in multitude. Huge army, massive. Samuel knew of all of this, the fact that this huge army was gathering and he had given instructions to Saul, go to Gilgal, Wait there for seven days and I will come and meet with you." And that will be in order to seek the Lord, to worship Him, to sacrifice to Him and to seek what He would have you to do. So Saul has his instructions from Samuel. But in the face of all this, the people that Saul was leading, they were getting more and more afraid. I mean, we would too. the size of this army. And remember what you can read of in the end of verse 13 is that there was in fact very few weapons in Israel because of all that the Philistines had been doing. So it seems that only Saul and Jonathan actually had a real sword. The rest of them had all sorts of weapons that they sort of carried but they weren't great fighting instruments. They certainly didn't have any chariots and horsemen and armour and here's this huge army that's like, you know, filling the land. And so they're scared, they start running. You've got people hiding in pits and people running up mountains and hiding in caves and some of them run so hard that they just went straight across the Jordan and kept on going. The people that were still there, they're trembling and he's knocking together. How many people are left? Well, when Saul eventually numbers the people, he's got 600 men. Remember, he had a standing army of 3,000, and then he called all Israel, and now he's only left with 600. And this massive army that faces them. Saul is very concerned. Enemy right upon them. Men weak and failing, and more and more and more of them disappearing every hour. And therefore he believed, we need to be about action. What are we doing just sitting here? We need to do something, and we need to do something now. Samuel said he would come, but today is the seventh day, and he's not here like he said he would be. Surely, we can't just sit here. We need to do something. You know all this in your life? We face all sorts of crises, don't we? We face difficulties, we face trials, we face enemies. And at times some of those things are really hard and they're really pressing and they're really powerful. And they seem at times to become overwhelming, burdened upon us. And we seem to be weaker and weaker and not able to do anything. It can be all sorts of things. Perhaps it's even in our closest relationships, the member of our family. Perhaps it can be even in marriage, a difficult husband, a difficult wife. Maybe it's a child that keeps being a rebel and keeps causing so many difficulties in the family. Things seem to get worse and worse, no matter what we do, Things seem to become more and more of a burden, and I know I'm supposed to keep just doing this, and I'm supposed to just keep walking in this way, but it's not working. It's not working. I need to do something. Perhaps if I just lost it with them and gave them a good tongue lashing, you know, maybe they'd get it. Maybe it's financial stress. We can't get work, or we can get a job, but it's not a great job, and it's only just bringing in enough income, but, you know, things are getting desperate. I might lose the house. What am I going to do? I can get a job that's, you know, with the mining company, for example, you know, way out there. There's no church there or anything, but I could go out there and I would get a ton of money. And I wouldn't be out there for very long. I'd just, you know, a few years just to get me on my feet and get a good, you know, sort of, bit of money behind me. Surely that would be alright. I'd only be away from the church for just a few years. Maybe it's, maybe it's hard. Maybe it's hard in the church living with these people. You know? These people. And I get the same bunch of people every week. That's hard, you know? Look at those other churches, you know, and the other churches, they've got much bigger churches and, you know, if you don't like this bunch of people, you go on with that bunch of people. But when it's so small, you go, it's just the same people. It's hard. Not only that, but You know, they seem to have much more exciting life elsewhere rather than in our congregation. And not only that, but you know, when you have so many more people, then there's much more likelihood you're going to be able to find someone you can have a relationship with and get a life's partner, you know? But not much choice. So, maybe I should go elsewhere. Maybe it's just the building opposition of society to us as Bible-believing Christians, and increasingly we become smaller and smaller in terms of what we hold to, don't we? So it's not just the world out there who says, you guys are nuts, you know, you're religious fanatics, extremists is the word now that's labelled, we're extremists. But it's not just the world that's doing that. It's the church world out there so that you hold forward and you say, no, we believe in remembering the Sabbath day to keep the Sabbath day holy. We don't work on the Sabbath day. We are those who believe that we give the whole day to the worship and the service and the love of our God. Extremist. You're a weirdo. We hold to sexual purity, so that sex is something that's given as a gift of God, beautiful gift of God for use in marriage and marriage alone between one man and one woman. Well, you're back in the dark ages. And increasingly that's a very narrow view held by very few churches. We hold to purity of worship, to worship God exactly as He has called us to. because that delights God. Once again, really narrow sort of people, getting smaller and smaller, getting supposedly weaker and weaker, just like it was in Saul's day. Maybe what we need to do is we need to do something about this. Maybe we need to rethink a lot of these sorts of things. Maybe there are all sorts of different ways we can do it. Give up a few of those doctrines and those beliefs and that will make things so much easier for us. We're not strong, are we? We're weak. We find we don't have the strength to keep on living as we're called to by God. Saul found it increasingly hard to keep waiting like Samuel told him to do, and we find that sometimes. Lord, how long do I have to just keep doing what you tell me to do when it doesn't seem to be working? How long do I just have to keep holding to this church? How long do I have to hold to being faithful and gracious and loving to people who seem to just throw it back in my teeth? To that horrible boss who's just wretched to me, how long do I have to keep on being faithful and gracious and forgiving and loving? How long? How long? I need to do something Maybe I will do something. Saul did something, didn't he? Saul did something. What did Saul do here? Well, the reason Saul, you know, Samuel's coming down to do the sacrifice and that's really what's kind of holding us up for going to war and to fight the battles and therefore it's going to happen anyway, the sacrifice is going to happen anyway, so the sacrificial animals are here, the altar's here, I'm here, I can just simply do what Samuel was going to do. What possible harm could there be in doing that? And so Saul falls to that temptation in verse 9. He calls for the burnt offering, he calls for the peace offerings, bring them out, it's time to get going with this. These offerings that are offered here, they are specific offerings, they are for particular purposes. The burnt offering is in the recognition of sin It's an offering that speaks of giving our whole selves to God in thankfulness. So after the shedding of the blood, the animal is put to death and the blood is shed and that pictures Christ's sacrifice, the shedding of the blood for sin. Then the whole animal is taken and put on the altar and the whole animal is burnt on the altar. And what it signifies therefore is a complete giving of ourselves in submission to God's service and to God's will. And what usually then follows is the peace offerings. And the peace offering signifies a complete and joyful life in peace with God. A living fellowship and communion of sitting down to have, as it were, a fellowship meal in communion with God. That's the idea of the peace offerings and it follows the giving of ourselves fully to God. But Saul, notice here, he only gets through the burnt offering. He doesn't actually come to offer the peace offerings because right at the end of offering the burnt offering Samuel arrives and that's very significant. You see what it's saying here is there is in fact no communion and there is no life and there is no peace for Saul. Why is that? The reason is Saul's horrendous sin here. God had made plain in his word that no one but the priests were to offer the sacrifices. In Numbers 18 verses 21 and 22, God had said, And behold, I have given the children of Levi all the tenth in Israel for an inheritance for their service which they serve, even the service of the tabernacle of the congregation. That's what they're to be about, the service of the tabernacle. Neither must the children of Israel henceforth come nigh the tabernacle of the congregation, lest they bear sin and die. God makes it very plain in His Word. He says, if you take up and you do what is the priest's work, the Levite's work, alone, then you will bear your sin and you will die. Why is it that this which Saul does is such horrible and wicked sin, what he has done? It's because, you see, what he said is, I don't need the priest. Who did the priest picture? Not just the sacrifice picture Jesus Christ, because he was the sacrifice, the Lamb of God, but the priest signified Jesus Christ. So what Saul's saying is, I don't need Jesus Christ to be my priest. I don't need him. Why is it that we are to understand that if we, surrounded by difficulties and trials, in our weakness and frailty, decide to take matters into our own hands, why is it that we also will be completely condemned? Because that's what we need to understand here. To understand this, we need to look a little deeper at Samuel's response. Let's look at Samuel's response in the second place. At this point, as I said, Samuel appears. No coincidence. This is God's hand. He brings Samuel at this point. What does Samuel say? Does Samuel say, oh dear, man, that's a real problem. Look at that army out there. Does he say, Oh dear, look at that, you've got hardly any army and they look like they're all just about to throw up, you know, because they're so scared. Is that what he says? Samuel says, what have you done? That's what Samuel says. What have you done? This is the most important and pressing matter. Not the enemies, not the weakness of the army, not the impossibility of a task. It's not the situation, it's not the crisis. It's the response of the heart. What have you done in the situation that God has brought to you? How have you responded to what God has done in your life? Saul knows. Saul knows absolutely that he should not have done this. He knows it absolutely. His conscience tells him what is right and what is wrong. Look at this with me. Look at Saul's response when Samuel actually says, what have you done? Samuel brings it to his heart. What does Saul say then? And as we look at this, Well, I know this is true of my own heart. When I look at this, I see me. I see what I tend to do. This is really God holding up a mirror to us and saying, do you see yourself here? Have a look at it. Saul says this, he says to Samuel, hold on, hold on Samuel. I know, he's saying, what have I done in offering this offering? But, Samuel, look at my circumstances. It's hard for me. Look, don't you realise the reality of what I'm facing here in my life? Yeah, God's Word says that, but don't you know how hard it is? Come on, Samuel, get real. God's Word has to be real. It has to meet me in my circumstances. That's what he's saying, first of all. Don't we do that? You recognise that? Well, I know what God's word calls me to, but that's too hard. You've got to deal with the fact that it's got to be real, we say. But then Saul goes further. He tries to say, no, no, my thoughts and actions are good and righteous. Notice that. No, I was in fact, I was seeking God. Initially, he said, I had not made the sacrifices at all. I'd held off. And I knew that that was a good and a right thing. And he said, therefore, that's the reason why I held off. But, he said, but then, even though I knew it wasn't the best thing, I then forced myself, he says. Notice that? I forced myself. Don't you know, Samuel, it was hard for me to do this. It was hard for me. I didn't really want to do this, but I forced myself to have to do it. That's rubbish. It's nonsense. Saul knows it's nonsense too. He's trying to justify himself here, but that's what we do too. We don't like to do what's hard. You see, what was hard for Saul was to wait on the Lord and not to sacrifice. The easy thing to do is to say, hey, bring the sacrifices and I'll do it. He didn't have to force himself to do that. He ran along with the sin without a problem. And that's what we do. It's easy for us to sin. We do it without a second thought. It's easy for us to simply say, I want to do what I want to do and go and do it. To be free and easy. But it's hard. It's hard to actually submit our heart and our mind and our lives to the beautiful truth of God. To the wisdom of God. So here's Saul. This is what he sets forward. This is what he says, you know. Get real. Don't you know the circumstances? I was doing the right thing. I just had to force myself. It was the circumstances. What's the real assessment of these things? What's Samuel's assessment? And therefore, what's God's assessment of this? Samuel says, you have done foolishly, verse 13. Thou hast done foolishly and you have not kept the commandment of the Lord your God which he commanded you. In fact, that second part about not keeping the commandment of the Lord, Samuel reiterates it at the end of verse 14. He says it again. You haven't kept the commandment of the Lord. You've done foolishly. Saul, this is the reality of what you've done. What you've done is you have simply filled up your heart and mind with your wants and your desires, with your wisdom, with your thoughts, with your feelings. That's what you're full of. And then that has led you into doing what you do and the decisions that you have made. You've done foolishly. What you have done is you have purposely left out of the picture God's wisdom and God's truth. You don't want that because it's inconvenient for you. And instead you have followed the foolishness of your own wisdom and your own wants and your own desires. And the consequence is that you have brought absolute foolishness into your life. Not only, but there's that you have not kept the plain and easy to understand commandments of the Lord. That is so true as well. Samuel is saying to him, Jehovah, your God, he commanded you to do something and it wasn't hard to understand. I mean, what's hard to understand? Saul, go to Gilgal, wait there, Samuel will come and give the sacrifices. Don't perform the sacrifices. Is there anything hard to understand about that? You see, there's no mistaking what God commands in His Word. Yes, it is true that there are parts of God's Word that are very deep. That's true. Because God is God and His Word is profound. There are parts of the things that God tells us in His Word which are difficult to know. The finer points of the Christian life at times, there's grey areas. That's true. But there's no mistaking in the ways of salvation and in all the major ways of living the Christian life, there's no mistaking what God says. He is crystal clear in his commands. Is there any mistaking of it when God says, wives, love and submit to your husbands? Is that kind of a bit misty, a bit unclear, vague kind of language? Husbands, Love your wives sacrificially just like Christ gave himself for the church. Wishy-washy language, ambiguous. Children, obey your parents in the Lord. People of God, seek First, the kingdom of God, not your education, not your pay, not a better job, and certainly not relationships. Seek first the kingdom of God. Seek me, and honour me, and my worship, and my service, and commit yourself to me and to the body of Christ. Plain, crystal clear. There's no doubting what God commands us to do. Do we obey the clear commands of God? Saul did not obey. This disobedience, you see, was to reject God. In fact, that's the ironic significance of Saul offering the burnt offering. Do you see that? The Bible quite often sets forward that kind of irony before us. Supposedly, you see, Saul, in giving up this offering, what he's supposedly saying is, I consecrate the whole of myself, the whole of my being, all of my will, all of my body to you, O Jehovah, unreservedly, to do your will and to submit to you and to love you. And all the time, the very action was saying, I will not submit to you, I will not do your will, and I will not follow your commands. I will actually take things into my own hands, I will follow my own wisdom and I will do what I think best. It's hypocrisy to do this with the very ordinance of the bird offering. Can we do that too? Yeah, we certainly can. We certainly can. We can come along outwardly to church and we can say variously the right kind of things, but in the end, if the way we live our lives, in our homes, in our heart and the decisions that we make, we reveal, what am I really doing? Am I really devoting my life to honour and obey and love and serve my covenant God? Or am I really devoting myself to my wisdom and my wants and my desires? What are the consequences? What are the consequences of this for Saul? He loses the kingdom. Samuel reveals this to him, reveals what the will of God is for Saul. He says to Saul here, if you were actually obedient from the heart, your kingdom would have continued. If you had obeyed the Lord, if you had trusted in Him and served Him from the heart, your kingdom would have continued. What does that tell us? Is that actually saying to us that God was sitting back and sort of saying, well, I'm actually dependent upon what man decides here? I'm not sure which way it's going to go, that if Saul decides to obey me, then his kingdom will continue and we'll have a Saul kingdom, but I've got a plan B, so just in case he doesn't obey, then I've got a plan B for David and then we'll have a David kingdom. No. No, of course it doesn't mean that at all. God always knew that Saul would show forth what was in his heart. He always knew what kind of a man he was, that he was a rebel against him and he knew in all of his providence exactly what would come to pass. God uses these things to reveal what was always his will. But you see there is far more here than simply that Saul would be the last of his line that would sit on the throne of Israel, not just the last of the dynasty of Saul, brief though it was. This is not just about Saul losing the Kingdom of Israel. What this pictures is the fact that Saul had lost the Kingdom of Heaven. Saul lost the Kingdom of Heaven. Not that he ever had it. Saul was never one of the Lords. He never loved Him, because God had never given him grace. to renew a heart that was always hard and was always rebellious against God. So while God gave to Saul outward things, such as the kingship and anointing him, gave to him even the gift of being able to prophesy for a time. But all of these things were simply that he was strengthening a very ungodly and earthly man in order that he may use him to be a blessing to his true covenant people Israel. Just the same as God raised up Pharaoh to be a vessel of destruction. God hated Saul because Saul was a wicked rebel against him and had always remained so. What God does is he uses this circumstance to actually reveal what Saul is like. Saul has now lost even the outward appearance of being one of God's true servants. This is the most serious message of our text tonight. And it's this. In our lives, we will reap what we sow. A farmer, when he sows his field with wheat, does not expect avocados to come up. He expects wheat because he sows wheat. It's a very clear principle, isn't it? What you sow is what you reap. Saul, in the whole of his life, despite many advantages, he maintained a steady rebellion against God. He was only interested in what he could get for himself. He was happy to go along with being the king and to outwardly follow what he thought would bring to him the most advantages and all of that sort of thing. But he was not interested in a true sorrow for sin and really seeking to have that life with God of all the blessing of covenant communion. So what he sowed in life, he therefore reaped. He sowed foolishness. and he reaped foolishness. He sowed that which was rebellion against God and therefore he reaped greater and greater guilt and punishment upon himself for refusing to honour and obey and serve God. In the end, what he reaped was an eternal judgement in hell. What of us? What of us? Only each one of us can actually say in our own heart what we're sowing. If we are like Saul, if we are here, here in the church of God, and we're attending church just simply because it seems like a good idea, seems like a good thing to do at the moment, seems like there's things I can actually get out of this, I can network, I can have a good social background, I can have people that can do things for me, I'm going to receive benefits from this and I can get ahead in life by being a member of the church at the moment, but I have no intention of actually doing all that stuff about what God commands and submit gladly to it. No, I'm not that interested in all of that stuff. We will reap what we sow. Such a life is rebellion against God. It is utter foolishness. You have done foolishly. And we will hear that declaration, your kingdom will not continue. Your little kingdom of serving yourself with yourself as a little king, it won't continue. You will suffer the consequences of a hard and rebellious heart. Oh, do not have such a heart. Come to the Lord. Confess such rebellion. Know that He is a God that abundantly pardons. there is life indeed in his kingdom. But brethren, there's another way to lose the kingdom. It's not just that this word is for those who may be hypocrites, those who may simply be maintaining an outward pretense of Christianity. You see, this word is for God's people. It's this, if we are God's people and we know of a true faith, We know that of sins forgiven in the Lord Jesus Christ. We rejoice in that truth. We are glad of that. And yet, what we do in our daily practical walk with the Lord is to say, you know, I can't walk exactly as God calls me to. It's too hard. And I must, therefore, I must force myself to do what I know is not so good because of my circumstances. They're just too hard to actually do exactly what God calls me to. There's too many consequences for me that I don't like and I really can't do that. Maybe later on, maybe when I grow a bit more, maybe, maybe, maybe. But I cannot. Wait for the Lord. I cannot just simply be faithful and just carry on doing what he says. To do that, to fill up our heart with our own desires and wants, to actually follow after our own wisdom, is to walk in foolish ways. The message then comes, you have done foolishly. And you will lose the kingdom. No, you won't lose salvation. Utterly impossible. As you are a child of God, you cannot lose the kingdom in that way. What do you lose? You lose the blessings of the kingdom. God calls you to be a citizen of his kingdom and he says, now walk with me in all my truth. And in walking in Him, trusting in Him, giving ourselves to take up all that He calls us to in those beautiful paths, we will know of a blessing of walking in His way. But do foolishly. Say, I want to follow after my own desires. I've got all sorts of wants and it's too hard just to wait on the Lord and to do all that that He commands me to. And you will lose the peace of the Kingdom. You will lose the joy of the Kingdom. We will lose the assurance of the Kingdom and we will wonder why life is so hard and lacking in life. May there be none of us who do that. No. No, that's not actually right. Because the reality is we all do do this, don't we? Perhaps the better way to say that is may each of us actually see the ways in which we do that. May each of us be brought to what we were looking at this morning, to repent and be converted. May we actually, by God's grace, be woken up to see the ways in which we do so foolishly and turn from that, and instead to walk in God's wisdom, to humbly take that up and walk in God's wisdom. We all do this, don't we? May we see it, may we turn from it by God's grace. What's the encouragement that we have here? The first great encouragement is this. These things are written in the word of God. Why is that an encouragement? Well, why it's an encouragement is this. Our loving saviour, our wise heavenly father, he knows what we're like. He knows how easily we fall into foolishness and we ignore his wisdom. And therefore he puts these things in his word that we might see them that we might be woken up to it. He's telling us what we're like. He's putting the mirror in front of us and he's saying, look, look at your own heart, look at your own life. We tend to get all bent out of shape, don't we, by the difficulties that come in life, by the crises that come along, by all the trials that we face that are there in our life. We tend to get all bent out of shape instead of seeing that they're trials that he's sending for our own good. We tend to think that our way of seeing things and our thinking and our wisdom has to be right when they're but foolishness, when we have his wisdom plainly instructing us in the way that we are to walk, and then we tend to justify ourselves. That's why God tells us this of Saul here, because he's saying, this is what we tend to do. We try to justify everything that we're doing. instead of humbly saying, Lord, you're right, I'm foolish, I'm wrong in these things. Therefore, be encouraged to acknowledge, Lord, you're right, this is me, this is me. And to thank our blessed covenant God for showing us and leading us to know why I lose the joys and the peace of living in his kingdom in the midst of the difficulties of life. We blame events, we blame people, we blame circumstances, we blame in the end God, don't we? Every time we do that, whenever we say, oh man, I know why I haven't got any joy, I haven't got any peace, things are so hard, it's because of this and it's because of that, it's because of these people, it's because at the moment, until these things change, I'm not going to have any joy and peace, instead of actually saying, the problem's me. The problem's me. Always was, always will be. I have a Heavenly Father who's working all things together for good for me. I have a Heavenly Father who's bringing every circumstance and every person that I interact with and everything that everybody says to me. Why? So that I can grow and flourish in His Kingdom. Why aren't I? Because of the foolishness of the response of my heart. The problem's me. Humbly confess that to the Lord today. Be encouraged. He knows you. He loves you. He pities you. He will continue to bring these circumstances in your life that you may see Him and know Him and love Him. But then, having acknowledged that central and important truth, we then need to take up the positive. What was the problem with Paul? He didn't trust. He didn't trust in the Lord. We need to trust, don't we? When God says, be faithful. I've saved you in Christ. And if I've done that much for you, will I not also care for you in every aspect of your life? Trust me. Trust me. Trust me and wait upon me. All that I call you to do, do it in love. Do it with grace, do it with cheerfulness, and wait upon me for the blessing. Proverbs 3, 5 and 6. We read it, didn't we? Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not to your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths. Walk in God's ways. Walk in the way of salvation with a humble faith in Christ that He has done all, that you may be saved in His kingdom forever. Walk in God's ways in the way of trusting implicitly His wisdom and His word for your guide for all that you will believe and all the way that you will live. Walk in God's ways in the way of simply thinking, doing and speaking as He calls you to. And then you can expect the rich and wondrous blessings of his kingdom. You will not lose anything by that, but you will gain all for all eternity. Amen.